The Lady of the Basement Flat Part 7

"My cousin has been stationed in India. In a border regiment. He has served his country for thirty years. Now he has had a paralytic stroke, and is making his way home by slow stages. A man who has worked and suffered as he has done deserves a home, and the grat.i.tude of his fellow-countrymen."

"There are two sides to every question, Mr Maplestone. If I chose to go into details, I might convince you that Mrs Fane and I have our own claims, which seem to us equally strong."

He leapt from his seat, and advanced until he stood directly facing my chair.

"That finishes it! It is no use appealing to your feelings. Let us make it pure business then! I offer you a hundred pounds down for the reversion of the lease!"

So it had come to this. Bribery undisguised! I lowered my eyelids, and sat silent, an image of outraged dignity.

"You refuse! It is not enough? Two hundred then! Three!"

Still silence. But my listening ears caught a threatening rustle behind the screen.

"Three hundred! It is a good offer. You are not bound to this neighbourhood. You can find other houses to suit you. Still not enough? Name your own terms then. How much will you take?"

"A million pounds!"

The words leapt out of my mouth as it seemed of their own volition. I was tired of this farcical bargaining, and determined to put an end to it, once for all. I stood up and faced his blank stare of amazement, without at least any outward shrinking.

"Surely it is useless to prolong this bargaining. It is very unpleasant and humiliating."

Mr Maplestone set his square jaw.

"You are only one partner to this transaction. Mrs Fane is probably your senior. If I were to see her, she might be induced to name a more--er--shall I say reasonable (oh, the cutting sarcasm of that tone!) figure."

"_Two_ millions."

The high clear tone struck across the room. Mr Maplestone wheeled round and beheld Charmion standing just outside the opening of the screen, one hand raised to rest lightly on the curved wood coping. She might have posed as a picture of graceful, imperturbed ease, so calm, so smiling, so absolutely unflurried and detached in both manner and bearing did she appear. Mr Maplestone looked at her and--this was a curious thing--at one glance realised his defeat. All my efforts at dignity and firmness had failed to convince him, but behind Charmion's frail, essentially feminine exterior, those keen eyes had at once detected that strain of inflexibility which I was only slowly beginning to realise.

It was hopeless to bandy words. The Squire knew as much, and turned to the table to lift his hat and whip. He gave a short scornful laugh.

"The terms seem a trifle--high! I am afraid I must retire from the bidding. Pastimes is yours. I hope"--he looked from me to Charmion, and his expression was not pleasant to see--"I hope you may not have cause to repent your bargain!"

We bowed. He bowed. The door opened and shut. Charmion looked at me and shrugged her shoulders.

"A declaration of war! We have begun our campaign by quarrelling with the most 'influential gentleman in these parts!' Things are getting exciting, Evelyn!"

I did not speak. Reaction had set in, and I felt a pang of remorse. I did not want to quarrel with anyone, influential or uninfluential. I was sorry I had been ungracious. I felt a pang of sympathy for the poor, big, bad-tempered man riding homeward after his defeat.

I wondered when and how we should meet him again.

CHAPTER SIX.

HUNTING THE FLAT.

Leaving the workmen to carry out the necessary decorations at Pastimes, Charmion and I adjourned to London to buy carpets and curtains, and a score of necessary oddments. We found it a fascinating occupation, and grew more and more complimentary to each other as each day pa.s.sed by.

"Charmion, you have exquisite taste! That's just the shade I had chosen myself."

"You have a perfect eye for colouring, Evelyn. I always know that your choice will be exactly my own."

Sometimes we saw the humour of these self-satisfied compliments, sometimes we were so busy and engrossed that we accepted them open-mouthed. I suppose in every mind personal preference is magnified into the standard of perfection, and all the arguing in the world will fail to convince A that he is--artistically speaking--colour-blind, or B that her drawing-room is a bazaar of trumpery odds and ends! All the more reason to be thankful that we agreed. We were convinced that our taste was unique; but supposing for one moment that it was bad, we should at least share a comfortable delusion!

The oak entrance hall was to be ornamented with old delft. The curtains and chair coverings were to be of the same shade of blue. The parquet floor was to be supplied with rugs of warm Eastern colours. Exactly the right shade of violet-purple had been found for the drawing-room, and I should be ashamed to say how many shops we ransacked for the chair coverings, until at last we found the identical pattern to satisfy our demands. Certainly I should be ashamed to confess what we paid for the piece. Charmion was appallingly extravagant! That was another discovery which I had made in the last days. It seemed as if she found a positive satisfaction in paying abnormal prices, not with the purse-proud bombast of the _nouveau riche_, but rather with the almost savage relief of a slave who shakes off a few links of a hated chain. I was a little alarmed at the total to which our purchases amounted; but I comforted myself with the thought, nothing new would be required for a long, long time, and that, if I found my income running short, I could always retire to my flat, and live on a figurative twopence under Bridget's clever management.

Charmion had heard all about the flat by this time, and had hurt my feelings by treating the whole proposal as a ridiculous joke. She made no attempt to dissuade me--had we not agreed never to interfere in each other's doings?--but she laughed, and said, "Dear goose," and arched her fine brows expressively as she asked how long a lease I proposed to take, "Or, rather, I should say, how _short_?"

Now I had myself inclined to a short lease with the option of staying on, but opposition stiffened my back, and I there and then decided to go and look at several possibilities which I had hitherto put aside as impracticable because they had to be taken for a term of three to five years. Bridget would go with me--dear, lawless, laughter-loving Bridget, who entered into the play with refreshing zest. Bridget had the real characteristic Irish faculty of looking upon life as an amusing game, and the more novel and unorthodox the game was, the better she was pleased. "Sure it's your own face! It's for you to do what you please with it!" was the easy comment with which she accepted my proposed disguise. She undertook to do most of the work of the flat without a qualm, and shed an easy tear of emotion over the sorrows and difficulties which it was to be my mission to reduce. "Oh, the poor creatures! Will they be starving around us, Miss Evelyn, and the little children crying out for bread?"

"N-not exactly that," I explained. "I want to work among gentlefolk, Bridget--poor gentlefolk, who suffer most of all, because they are too proud to ask for help. But they will probably be short of time, and service, and probably of strength, too, and when I get to know them, they will let me help them in these ways, though they would not accept my money--"

Bridget looked sceptical.

"I wouldn't put it past them!"

I laughed, and dropped the subject.

"Oh, well, time will show. Meantime you understand, don't you, Bridget, that they are not _cheerful_ places that we are going to see? Cheerful positions in London mean big rents, and I mean to live among people who have to count every penny several times over, and try hard to make it into a sixpenny bit. You and I will have sunshine and light at Pastimes--you won't mind putting up with dullness for part of the year?"

"What would be the good of minding? You'd go, whether or not, now you'd got your head set!" returned Bridget bluntly. She added after a pause, "And besides, we'll be getting our own way. I'm thinking we shall be glad of the change. It's not as much as a thought of your own will be left to you, with Mrs Fane by your side."

"You are entirely wrong, Bridget, and it is not your place to make remarks about Mrs Fane. Please don't let me hear you do it again."

"Yes, ma'am," murmured Bridget, turning instantly from a friend into an automaton, as was her custom on the rare occasions when I hardened myself to find fault. The words were submissive enough, but her manner announced that she had said her say, and would stick to it, though Herself, poor thing, must be humoured when she took the high horse. As usual, I retired from the conflict with a consciousness of coming off second best!

The next day I told Charmion that I was "engaged," and true to our delightful agreement, she asked no questions, but quietly disappeared into s.p.a.ce. Then, with a ponderous feeling of running the blockade, I put on wig and spectacles and the venerable costume which had been provided for the occasion. Appropriately enough, it had originally belonged to an aunt--Aunt Eliza, to wit--who had handed it to me in its mellowed age, to be bequeathed to one of my many _protegees_. It was brown in colour--I detest brown, and it cordially detests me in return-- and by way of further offence the material was roughened and displayed a mottled check. The cut was that of a country tailor, the coat accentuating the curve of Aunt Eliza's back, while the skirt showed a persistent tendency to sag at the back. When I fastened the last b.u.t.ton of the horror and surveyed myself in the gla.s.s, I chuckled sardonically at the remembrance of heroines of fiction whose exquisite grace of outline refused to be concealed by the roughest of country garments.

Certainly my grace did not survive the ordeal. What good looks I possessed suffered a serious eclipse even before wig and spectacles went on, and as a crowning horror, a venerable "boat-shaped" hat (another relic of Aunt Eliza) and a draggled chenille veil.

Bridget was hysterical with enjoyment over the whole abject effect, but I descended the stairs and pa.s.sed through the great hall of the hotel with a miserable feeling of running the blockade. Suppose I met anyone!

Suppose anyone _knew_ me! Suppose--I flushed miserably at the thought--Charmion herself was discovered sitting in the hall, and raised her lorgnon to quiz me as I pa.s.sed by!

I need not have troubled. Not a soul blinked an eye in my direction.

If by chance a wandering glance met mine, it stared past and through me as though I were impalpable as a ghost. My disguise was a success in one important respect at least--there was no longer anything conspicuous about me; I was just a humble member of society, one of the throng of dun-coloured, ordinary-looking females, who may be seen by the thousand in every thoroughfare in the land, but who, as a matter of fact, are not seen at all, because no one troubles to look. By Bridget's side I pa.s.sed through the streets of London as through a desert waste.

Half an hour's journey by tube brought us to the first of the flats on my list. It was also the first specimen of its kind which Irish Bridget had ever seen, and the shock was severe. I found myself in the painful position of expecting "a decent body" to live in a kitchen two yards square, with a coal "shed" under the table on which she was supposed to cook, and to sleep in a cupboard, screened in merciful darkness, since, when the electric light was turned on, the vista seen through the grimy panes was so inimitably depressing that one's only longing was to turn it off forthwith!

"Preserve us! Indeed, if it was to die in it we were trying, it would be easy enough, but I'm thinking we'd make a poor show of living, Miss Evelyn! And used to the best as we are, too," said poor Bridget dolefully.

I sprang a good ten pounds in rent at the sound of her pitiful voice, and ran my pencil through every address below that figure.

Ten separate flats did we visit in the course of that day, and it was a proof of what Aunt Emmeline would call my stubbornness that I came through the ordeal without wavering. Regardless of Bridget's appealing eyes, I led the way forward, always affecting a buoyant hope that our next visit would be successful, while mentally I was holding a Jekyll and Hyde argument with my inner self, as follows:--

"Impossible to live in such warrens!"

"_Other people_ manage to live in them all the year round!"